


summer storms and treasure maps

by typical_art_dork



Series: summer of '86 [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Babysitting antics, Brotherly Steve Harrington & Dustin Henderson, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, Good Friend Robin Buckley, POV Steve Harrington, Roadtrips, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Robin would too, Slice of Life, Steve would do anything for the kids, The Goonies vibes, Treasure Hunting, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23776120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typical_art_dork/pseuds/typical_art_dork
Summary: When Steve gets a frantic call from The Party at seven in the morning regarding a treasure map they'd unearthed from the depths of Will's basement, he can't let the kids follow it alone, can he?Follow one reluctant Steve, one overenthusiastic Robin, and their six over-caffeinated children as they embark on a weekend-long quest to uncover the treasure Will's map alludes to deep in the woods of Hawkins. Will they go home empty-handed, or will the search for buried treasure actually lead them somewhere?Steve sure as hell doesn't know-- he's just the chauffeur.
Relationships: But the story focuses on family & friendship, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Elmax if you really squint, Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & The Party, Steve's got a little crush on Jonathan but he doesn't know it yet
Series: summer of '86 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713808
Comments: 14
Kudos: 131





	summer storms and treasure maps

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, weary travelers. Before you let the word count daunt you, I promise this is worth the read if you're a sucker for comedic, thematic, fluffy reads that delve into Steve and Robin and the Party's dynamic. I didn't intend for this work to spiral out as far as it did, but once I started writing, I couldn't stop. I'm leaving it as one chapter because at this point, I can't really be bothered to mess with the pacing by using chapters as dividers. 
> 
> So grab a snack, settle in, maybe turn on the playlist I created for this story if that's your jam (it's "summer storms and treasure maps" in all lowercase)! 
> 
> If sappy stories about friendship, adventure, and a Goonies-esque treasure hunt aren't your cup of tea, I wish you all the best in your future fic-hunting endeavors!

JULY

Steve gets the call just as he’s heading to the kitchen to fix himself and Robin breakfast. After his first year of community college and what Robin had dubbed her “Coming-Out Catastrophe”, they’d come to the unwavering conclusion that the next logical step in their friendship was to pool their money from various summer jobs and rent out an apartment in Hawkins together. 

It’s a cozy place on the border of town, just out-of-the-way enough to serve as a functional hideout for the kids from any possible danger if there’s somehow another year of Hawkins oddities to endure, although Steve hopes to every deity that there won’t be any need for them to use his apartment as a safehouse any time soon. It’s actually kind of cute now that Robin’s put up posters and fairy lights everywhere-- definitely more inviting than his old house. It was getting hard to have to come home to an empty mansion, and every time he cleaned the pool, it took hours to get the image of Barb’s corpse out of his head. 

So the arrangement was perfect, actually: living with Robin ensured that there was never a dull moment, and the little shitheads were downright gleeful about the situation when Steve told them, because they now had not one but two majorly unqualified chauffeurs at their beck and call. 

Exhibit A: The unmistakable sound of Dustin Henderson’s voice blaring through Steve’s Party-issued walkie talkie at seven in the goddamn morning. 

Here’s how Steve knows he’s changed: the 17-year-old Steve would have taken one look at the duct-taped, sticker-covered walkie talkie, shoved it under a couch cushion, and ignored it for the rest of the day. In fact, 17-year-old Steve (God, what an asshole) wouldn’t even have a walkie talkie. The Party insisted he have it for “emergencies”, though, which Steve quickly learned meant one of two things: the kids calling for a drive to the arcade, or a belated invitation to Byers Family Movie Night, which usually entailed all the little idiots piling onto Will’s couch while Nancy, Jonathan, Hopper, and Joyce made entirely too much popcorn and argued over whether or not the kids should be allowed to watch whatever movie they’d begged Steve and Robin for at Family Video. Granted, Steve always drives them to the arcade and always comes over when they ask, so that probably says more about his ability to tell Dustin “no” than it does about the kids’ batshit traditions, but still. 

“Code red, code red,” Dustin bleats, and Steve dives for the walkie that’s balanced haphazardly on a stack of Robin’s nerd textbooks, “Steve, come in, it’s urgent!”

There’s a struggle on the other end of the line, and Mike’s irritated mutter seeps through: “Say over, Dustin”, and Dustin says “over” with so much dramatic exasperation that Steve almost rolls his eyes at the kid even though he isn’t here. 

There’s another clamoring, and Dustin must have taken the walkie back from Mike, because he’s talking super loud into it, Jesus Christ, and Steve can hear the unmistakable sound of the other four shitheads in the background talking over each other, and he’s suddenly so vexed by the entire situation that he yells, “Hey!” straight into the mic. 

There’s a beat of stunned silence, and Steve jumps at the chance to get a word in. 

“What the hell is going on?” 

And yeah, okay, he can kind of hear it now; Robin’s been teasing him relentlessly about his “mom voice” for weeks, ever since he’d called Mike “young man” when he’d almost fallen from the treehouse the kids had built a month ago (El had caught him again with her powers, bless the kid), and he never really considered the notion before, but he totally sounds like a housewife that’s ready to beat her kids with a dishtowel when he says that.

He can hear Will and El giggle quietly in the background, and there’s another static-y struggle before Max’s voice spills through, determined as ever. 

“It’s not a bad code red,” she clarifies. 

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Steve deadpans back. “Care to elaborate?”

“We need a code for when something’s urgent, but not bad urgent,” Dustin interjects, and it must be directed at Mike, because he replies “code orange” without missing a beat, and then Lucas says something about that being stupid, becaude they could just use “code green”, and they’re arguing again, and thank God for Max because she hushes them like she’s some sort of authority figure and sure enough, they quiet down. 

“Listen,” she says to Steve, or all of them, maybe, “we found this really old map of Hawkins in Will’s basement and it had been all marked up, like there’s this trail leading to an X, and we figured it had to be some kind of treasure, so we were gonna ask if you could give us a ride to the town hall to dig up old records of Hawkins to see if there are any local legends about a treasure, so we know if the map’s worth following or not,” she says in one go, stopping to catch her breath before adding, “Over.”

Steve has to pause just to absorb all of this (since when does Hawkins have a town hall?) as Robin flounces into the room, eyes flicking questioningly from the walkie to Steve’s “what the fuck” expression. 

He’s well aware that the gremlins have this collective need to hyperfixate on bizarre shit in order to, as Robin puts it, “cope with their mutual trauma”, but this is taking it a step too far, maybe. It’s one thing to drive the little monsters to the arcade every Friday, or convince Hopper to let El watch Halloween or Sleepaway Camp or The Shining for “the culture”, but he doesn’t know the first thing about accessing town records, or even following a map, for that matter. He shoots a glance at Robin-- she took a college-level geography course last semester, and she probably knows more about local lore than he does. Robin’s way too cool to be friends with Steve, really, but he figures that it’s probably the Universe silently paying him back for dealing with its astronomical level of crazy bullshit for the past three years, like giving Joyce to Hopper or El to the rest of the kids. 

Steve makes his decision just as Mike murmurs “So? Will you help us? Over.” into the walkie, and Steve sighs that sigh that’s two parts fondness and one part pure exasperation before saying, “Fine. But only if I can bring Robin. Over.”

Robin jerks her head up just as Dustin yells, “Thanks Steve! Be over by eight!” into the walkie over the cheering of the other kids. Steve bites back a smile. “Over!” El yells gleefully, like she’s in on a joke, and the sound cuts out as one of the kids high-fives whoever’s gotten ahold of the walkie talkie. 

Robin looks at him expectantly, a smile already playing on her lips. She’d taken an instant liking to the rest of the “small children” when Steve had brought her over to the Byers’ house to stay for a while after her asshole parents had kicked her out. She’d stayed in the guest bedroom, an extension Joyce had made on the house after joining the Hawkins police department full-time and Hopper had donated some extra cash to the Byers’ home makeover fund. The arrangement was only for a few weeks, because in no time Steve had found a suitable apartment on the edge of town, but while it lasted, it led to Robin spending more time with the kids since Will’s house was their favorite meeting spot (Steve guessed it was because it was the one place they could talk about The Upside Down with adults around). When he visited, Robin was always curled up on the Byers’ couch listening to the kids’ weird role-playing game campaigns, and in no time she’d earned her own special spot in their little misfits group. 

“What’s the plan for today, Harrington? They want a ride to the arcade again?”

He wishes it were that simple.

“The shitheads are determined to follow this map they found in Will’s basement to some kind of treasure, and they need a ride to the town hall to find, like, records or something? About local legends? I don’t know, the whole thing is pretty weird, but it’s Saturday, and raining, so what else are we gonna do?”

Robin smiles her I’m-super-excited-but-trying-not-to-show-it smile as she finishes the last of her cereal, slapping him on the back as she rushes to go get dressed. 

“Start the car, dingus! Dustin said eight o’clock!” she exclaims excitedly. Steve rolls his eyes as he shrugs on his jacket, grabbing Robin’s rainbow umbrella from the coat rack. He knows he’s probably gotten himself into some crazy adventure, as hanging out with the kids usually guarantees, but he can’t bring himself to care much. Besides, Hopper and Joyce would flay him alive (no pun intended, Jesus) if they knew he’d left the kids to embark on this probably-dangerous quest by themselves, so. 

It’s kind of his moral responsibility. 

\---

As Steve’s car pulls up into the Byers’ driveway, he notices two things instantly: one, Joyce’s and Jonathan’s cars are both gone, so they must not be at home, and two, Cyndi Lauper is blaring from the house at a billion decibels. 

Through the gloss of silvery rain, Steve can make out the yellow glow of the kitchen light, and he can almost see the kids huddled around the kitchen table, shoving raincoats on as they catch sight of Steve’s car in the driveway.

Robin’s face lights up at the music, and she turns in her seat as Steve shifts into park. 

“This is just like The Goonies!” she exclaims, and promptly blanches at Steve’s baffled expression. 

“Dingus, please tell me you’ve seen The Goonies,” she pleads, but Steve’s saved from replying as his car door swings open and Dustin grins toothily at him as the rest of the kids spill out of the house, a never-ending horde of messy hair and multi-colored raincoats, rubber rain boots and grimy sneakers splashing through puddles. 

Robin laughs as they throw open the car doors, and Steve pivots in his seat as Lucas and Mike climb into the backseat, fighting over who should have to sit in the very back. Will pipes up over them, and Steve thinks he hears the kid volunteer to ride in the trunk-- El’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, so he guesses he heard right. 

“Hold it right there!” Steve yells, like he’s Hopper or some shit, and even though Robin claps a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing, Mike and Lucas freeze like he’s pulled a gun on them. 

“Listen here, dipshits,” Steve demands, and Robin nudges him, mouthing “mom voice” as he fights back the urge to roll his eyes at her. She’s got her feet up on the dashboard, red converse tapping out the beat to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, which is still blaring impossibly loud from the house. The kids probably hijacked Jonathan’s radio. Christ almighty. 

“No one gets in this car until one of you can tell me where exactly it is we’re going and how long this little expedition is gonna take,” Steve says. Lucas sighs heavily before climbing out of the back, and Mike follows suit when Steve levels his signature stop-being-a-dick glare at him. 

Steve settles into his seat, crossing his arms expectantly as the kids huddle up, the telltale sound of Max and Mike bickering rising above the rest of the discussion. 

Finally, they separate, and Max shoulders past a scandalized Mike and indifferent Dustin to stand in front of the rest of the kids, her fiery hair glued to her forehead by the rain.

“We’re going to the town hall first,” she announces, and Mike nods his approval as El levitates flowers into Will’s hair and Robin tries not to laugh. 

“Then, if we find out there really is a treasure, we follow this,” she says, pulling something out of her raincoat pocket and thrusting a battered piece of honest-to-God parchment into Steve’s hands. He unfurls it after opening his umbrella to shield the kids from what’s rapidly becoming a downpour as Robin gasps quietly behind him, leaning over him to get a better view of the map. 

It’s Hawkins, alright, or at least what Hawkins used to be, although it hasn’t seemed to have changed all that much: there’s a trail marked in smudged, water-damaged ink across the expanse of the paper, scrawling through the woods that border the town, across a river that Steve can only assume is the one the kids went swimming in last summer, and finally ending in what looks like some sort of cave. There’s a wobbly X that’s been circled twice at the end, ink blotting the paper around it. 

“Holy shit,” Robin breathes, fingers reaching out to trace the trail. She catches Steve’s eye, mouth quirking up in a smile. There’s that light in her eyes that appears every time they’re about to do something certifably insane, like infiltrate an underground Russian base, or fiddle with the circuits in the arcade games when the manager isn’t watching to rig the game in the kids’ favor, or build a goddamn raft for El and Will to sail onto the river as the rest of the shitheads play Capture the Flag, and Steve feels that unmistakable thrill of Hopper-would-definitely-kill-me-if-he-knew-this-is-how-we-were-spending-the-weekend surge up in his chest, so he rolls the map back up and hands it over to Max, nodding his resignation to the group. 

“At the least, it’ll take the afternoon,” Max says. “At the most, all weekend. Don’t worry about Joyce and Hopper, we told them we’re having a sleepover till Monday at Mike’s, and Nancy and Jonathan are on a roadtrip to that Cure concert, so they won’t know anything about it.” 

Steve can almost see Robin grinning behind him.

“Alright, morons,” he says decisively. “Get in the car.”

As Mike and Lucas shove past each other and Dustin yells something about having sat in the very back last time, Max throws an arm around El and pushes her to the front of the crowd, and they clamber into the row of seats just behind Steve and Robin, leaving the other three boys to sort out their seating arrangement as Will races back into the house to stop the music.

As Robin slides a tape into the radio, Lucas and Dustin shove past Max to the third row of seats, grumbling incoherently as Mike follows close behind them. They’ve decided to give Will the third spot in the second row, and Steve hides a smile behind a map to the town hall that Robin’s unearthed from the depths of the knapsack she’s brought along. In the five seconds it takes to shift into drive, Will bounds out of the house and throws open the car door, sliding in next to Max, daisies from earlier still twisted in his hair. 

As the melodious sounds of “Under Pressure” color the road to the Hawkins town hall and the kids sing along off-key in the back, Steve ponders the inherent danger that comes with allowing six children to follow a treasure map through the woods on a stormy day and finds that he can’t bring himself to be the slightest bit concerned. After all, they have Robin, who’s a navigational genius compared to Steve (and just generally better at adulting despite being 17), and El, who has actual superpowers, so. They’ll be fine. 

What’s the harm in a little adventure, anyway?

\---

Okay, so maybe there’s a little harm-- read: the tragic demise of Steve’s perfectly-gelled-back hair as he herds six kids and one over-enthusiastic 17-year-old through the pouring rain to the town hall. It doesn’t storm much in Hawkins, so today is an ironic exception to the normally-sunny days that fill the month of July on Steve’s calendar. Friday was gloomy, but today is, as El delightedly puts it, “raining cats and dogs”. She’s big on figurative language lately, and once said under her breath to Max that Steve looked “madder than a wet hen”, which was enough to extinguish his anger then and there. Looking back, he can’t even remember what he’d been mad about, just that Mike was being a little shit again. 

“Steve, why the hell did you only bring one umbrella?” Dustin whines, sidling up beside him to hog the thing again. Mike and Lucas clamber over each other, stumbling as they try to escape the torrential downpour. Ahead of them, Robin is twirling Max and El around, because the three of them have actually pulled their raincoat hoods up, and Steve would be smiling at them if his hair wasn’t plastered to his forehead like a soapy mop. Thank God Robin hadn’t brought her camera along-- he’d be done for if his current “look” got back to Jonathan or Nancy somehow. 

Steve sighs as Dustin whacks Mike away with the umbrella, keeping the town hall in sight. Just five more minutes of trudging through puddles and then they’ll be inside. Upon their arrival, Robin insisted they park on the shoulder of the road a ways away to “avoid suspicion” from anyone who might recognize Steve’s car, like they’re on some sort of spy mission, and of course the kids latched on to the idea of going “undercover”. 

“There’s only one umbrella,” Steve says pointedly, yanking it back from Dustin, “because I figured you dipshits would have brought your own. Also, I don’t have one. This is Rob’s, so stop playing with it.”

That answer seems to satisfy Dustin, who mutters, “To hell with it!” before bounding out of the cover of the umbrella to race Robin, Max, and El to the big double doors of Hawkins’ town hall.  
The building towers over the rest of town at what Steve guesses is at least five stories, and he wonders idly how he’s gone 19 years of his measly life without knowing that it existed. They could have probably gleaned more information about Hawkins’ weird-ass interdimensional anomalies from whatever is filed away in that place than they did from the kids’ DnD game. 

“Dustin, Max says she’s gonna beat you!” El screams delightedly, despite the fact that she’s the one that’s actually in the lead. “Over!” she adds as an afterthought, and Robin laughs happily as she slows to fall into step with Steve.  
“My money’s on El,” she says, flashing two dollars at him. Steve grins.

“Four bucks says Will decides to join in and beats all of ‘em.”

The kid’s undergone a massive growth-spurt over the past year, and is now almost as tall as Mike. He’s had practice running from shit, too, Steve thinks, then immediately feels like Billy-tier garbage for entertaining that train of thought. 

Sure enough, though, El bounds up the concrete steps leading to the heavy double doors of the town hall first and smiles triumphantly at a panting Dustin, who comes in last just a hair after Max. Will has fallen to the back of the group, walking side-by-side with Mike, who’s griping animatedly about something Steve can’t make out over the rain that’s still screwing up his hair, goddamn it. 

Robin whoops, high-fiving El as Steve fishes four bucks out of his wallet and Will rushes forward to hold one of the doors open for the group. They spill into the town hall like a wave of impatient tourists, and the lady at the front desk holds back a smile at the kids. Steve heaves an internal sigh of relief-- at least she’s not an asshole. 

Robin moves past the rest of the group, sauntering confidently up to the counter and smiling at the woman. She’s got to be in her mid-forties, Steve guesses, and she’s got the same motherly look as Joyce Byers, smile wrinkles around her eyes and all. Her name tag says “Cynthia”, and she looks pleased to finally have something to do. Maybe this will work out.

“Hi,” Robin greets her with purpose. “The kids I’m babysitting wanted to have a look at the town records, something about a summer project for school next year,” she explains without missing a beat, and Steve says a silent prayer of thanks to whatever God sent him Robin Buckley. Cynthia smiles warmly at Robin, Steve, and the kids, and says, “Of course. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

Robin turns, beckoning Mike to the front of the group. He smiles uncertainly at Cynthia. 

“We were, uh, looking for anything to do with local legends. Monsters, treasure, that sort of thing.”

Cynthia’s eyes light up with recognition, and she smiles again. She really reminds Steve of Joyce, and he wishes for a bizarre second that his own mother was the same. There’s just something about walking into a house that always smells like candles and freshly-baked cookies that makes him ache for a different childhood; he always has to remind himself that Joyce isn’t actually his mom when he’s over at the Byers’, and it’s kind of a weird feeling. This is kind of a weird feeling too, standing with the kids and Robin, sopping wet, in this huge building that looks like it should belong to his father, with this stranger acting like it’s totally normal that they braved a storm for a school project in early July when school doesn’t even start until September. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, vanishing into a back room in search of the files. 

Max and El giggle at Robin as they shake water from their jackets and make squeaking sounds with their rain boots, and Mike goes, “Summer project? Thank God Robin can think under pressure, because Steve would have probably just jumped over the counter and tried to find the shit himself!” 

Both the Bowie pun and the image of Steve hopping over the front desk to find the files send Will into hysterics, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Language, Wheeler,” he scolds half-heartedly, whipping the closed umbrella at Mike. He dodges it, and the umbrella pops open as Dustin shrieks about bad luck. Steve ignores him, brandishing it like a weapon at the kids.

“Get the hell away from me, that thing’s soaking wet!” Mike yells through laughter, and Steve bites back another comment about his colorful word usage and pretends not to hear Dustin reply with “that’s what she said”, which doesn’t really make any sense, anyway. Robin’s already teased him once today for “mom voice”, and he doesn’t need another joke made at his expense about his helicopter-parent tendencies. 

“I don’t know any of these people,” Robin yells, her voice echoing in the empty hall. “They’re holding me against my will!” 

“Steve, you’re gonna take my eye out,” Mike laughs. 

Steve ignores the kid and waves the umbrella around, swinging it towards Lucas, who ducks out of the way and jostles into Dustin, who bumps into the counter and sends a stack of manila file folders fluttering to the ground. Max and El jump at the chain reaction, and dissolve into laughter again. 

Of course it’s fucking then that Cynthia makes a reappearance, and Robin whirls around to face her, all business-like, as the kids scramble into some semblance of order and Steve tries desperately to get the umbrella to close.

Will’s hastily picking up the file folders as Cynthia slides three new ones across the counter to Robin. 

“This is all I could find honey, I hope it’s enough,” she says kindly, despite the chaos Steve and the kids have caused in the five minutes she was gone. “There’s definitely something about a treasure in there, too-- some local lore about a map,” she adds, and Robin’s eyes grow comically wide; she stumbles over a thank-you as the kids try to tamp down their clear overexcitement. Steve’s pretty sure he hears Lucas hit Dustin over the head with something, whispering “get it together, Henderson”. 

They’re out the door in an uncoordinated jumble of limbs, Dustin screaming something about being rich, and Steve thanks Cynthia one last time over the thrilled yelling of the kids-- they’re doing that thing where they all try to talk at once again, and Robin’s got her head thrown back laughing at something El must have said, because the kid’s wide eyes are glued on Robin and she’s smiling bigger than Steve’s ever seen her smile, and he thinks, yeah, okay, not a bad way to spend a Saturday. 

\---

They all crowd back into Steve’s car with minimal bitching from Mike or Lucas, which Steve counts as a definite win. He glances in the rearview mirror at the shivering kids as Robin flicks on the overhead lights in the back and thumbs through the first file folder, tossing it at Steve with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That one’s full of shit we already know,” she says, winking at him. 

Steve holds back a laugh. They’d told Robin everything about what Hopper was now calling The Great Government Cover-Up of 1983, as well as The Body-Snatching Menace of 1984, over the course of a frigid winter afternoon after the Byers family had moved back into town, and she’d absorbed it with a surprising air of nonchalance as the kids crowded around her on Will’s sofa, all yelling over each other about El’s powers and the search for Will and fighting the Demodogs as she shovelled popcorn into her mouth, getting all starry-eyed like a little kid when Mike mentioned how Nancy could “fuck shit up” with a gun, at which point Steve grabbed the nearest magazine and whacked the kid over the head with it.  
From the back of Steve’s car, Dustin sighs a long-suffering sigh (God, the drama!) and says, “Show us the files already, guys!”

Robin’s thumbing through the second folder, but stops suddenly after the third page, her face lighting up with excitement. 

“Here it is! Okay, huddle in close, children,” she says, dropping her voice to the whispery octave she reserves for telling only mildly scary ghost stories around homemade campfires in the Byers’ backyard, or reading one of her copies of Little Women to Steve as they laid sprawled out on her bedroom floor at three in the morning, or talking one of the kids through a panic attack while Steve herds the others into a separate room. Steve loves that voice, and he finds himself leaning closer along with the kids, entranced. 

Robin turns in her seat, unbuckling her seatbelt and throwing her legs over the console to face towards the kids in the back; El’s got her head on Max’s shoulder, and Max has got her arm around Will. They’ve scooted so far forward in their seats that it does feel like a huddle, albeit a dysfunctional one because Lucas, Dustin, and Mike are practically hanging over the seats in the second row to see Robin as she reads, and Steve gets that weird feeling inside his chest, that pull, that makes him want to just hug every single kid in the car. And Robin. Always Robin. God, he really is a mom. 

“Alright,” Robin says, shifting fully into story-teller mode, all glinting eyes and faux-seriousness that makes Steve have to bite his cheek to keep from smiling too hard. “Listen carefully, kids, ‘cause if we somehow lose this file folder,”-- here she levels a teasing glance at Dustin, who yelps out a little sound of indignation-- “we’ve gotta have at least one of you that remembers all the details, ‘cause something tells me we’re gonna need ‘em for this quest.”

The kids all nod, even Mike, their faces grave with sincerity. El’s eyes are wide again, fixed on Robin like she’s the older sister she never got to have, and Max smiles softly to herself like yeah, this is gonna be fun. Steve’s so glad he brought Rob. 

“The legend says,” Robin clears her throat dramatically, and Will leans impossibly closer, “that ‘centuries ago, a criminal by the name of Cornelius Sweetwine escaped from the town prison during a violent jail riot, and vanished into the sprawling forests of Hawkins in an attempt to find the treasure he’d buried there years ago. He’d been imprisoned for multiple counts of theft, but the police had never managed to find the money he stole. They wagered that he must have hid it somewhere in town, but in the years he’d been kept in prison, they never found it. Once he escaped, that's what he was after, but legend has it he was murdered in cold blood before he could get to his treasure. Conspiracy theorists suggest that Sweetwine was killed by the wealthy man he’d stolen from on all six occasions that had landed him in prison. Apparently he drew up a map and hid it somewhere in Hawkins, and to this day, we have yet to find the map or the money that Sweetwine plundered.’” 

“And you guys found the fucking map,” she adds belatedly. 

The car goes deadly quiet for a beat, the only sound being the murmur of rain pattering against the windows, and then Mike’s going “Holy shit”, and Dustin’s babbling about being rich again, and El and Max are grinning at each other like hell, yeah, and Robin’s shaking Steve by the shoulder and smiling so hard it looks like it hurts. 

“Dude,” she’s saying, “This shit is real!” And then she shoves the map into Steve’s hands, a trembling finger tracing a name Steve hadn’t noticed before that’s scrawled in the top left-hand corner of the parchment. 

Cornelius E. Sweetwine, the shaky print reads. Steve’s breath catches in his throat, and then he’s passing the map around, and the kids are screaming again, yelling over each other, but Steve can make out Lucas shrieking, “Take that, college tuition!”, and Robin bleats out this surprised little laugh that he’s only heard once-- on the dingy bathroom floor of the Starcourt mall-- and suddenly Max’s fiery, driven voice rises above Will and Mike’s elated laughter, commanding Steve to “drive, dammit!”, so he slams on the gas pedal without thinking and shit, the car’s in reverse, and all the kids and Robin shriek with laughter as Steve jerks into drive and peels off the shoulder back onto the rain-drenched, empty road, his heart hammering in his chest as Robin clamps a steadying hand down on his shoulder, her own shoulders still shaking with laughter. 

She leans forward and presses play on her tape again, and El and Max just about flip their collective lids when the electrifying bass of “She Bop” blares through the car as Steve pushes 70 down the deserted road, smiling against the rain as Will dances in his seat and Mike and Lucas hurl random shit at each other in the back, all the fire gone from their eyes. 

Suddenly, Steve doesn’t give a shit if Hopper kills him for indulging the weirdos in their little adventure-- it’s the happiest he’s seen them since Robin bought them all Walkmans with the last of her money from Family Video for Christmas, and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna turn around now. 

\---

They’re halfway to the edge of the woods (only the beginning of their journey, really) when Steve’s walkie talkie goes ballistic, the static-y stumble of two panicked voices thundering through the car. It’s been about a half-hour of driving down seemingly endless back roads, and Robin’s tape ended an eternity ago; the kids fell asleep one by one, Will succumbing to the call of a nap first with El following close behind, then Dustin, Lucas, and Mike going eerily quiet in the backseat, and finally Max drifting in and out, a protective hand still clutching Will and El to her. Robin’s got her feet propped up on the dash again, and she’s stolen Steve’s grey hooded sweatshirt, her fingers fiddling absentmindedly with the hoodie strings as they roll over never-ending gravel. When the walkie spills out panicked voices again, Mike jolts awake in the backseat, back ramrod straight. 

“Nancy,” he breathes, and Will nods vigorously in the second row. “Jonathan, too”, he adds in a whisper, and Steve realizes with a start that of course the kids gave Nancy and Jonathan walkies, too, because why wouldn’t they? That was their only direct line of communication with everyone, that was their link, so of course they’d give their siblings one. 

Will’s eyes are wide, and he turns to Max, who’s awake and jostling Eleven as Dustin and Lucas stir in the back. “What do we do?” he asks her, and she shrugs her shoulders incredulously at him like 'I don’t know, idiot,' and then the walkie hums with static again and Jonathan’s worried voice spills through. 

“Steve? Steve, are the kids with you?”

Robin throws Steve a thoroughly-panicked glance, and she presses the response button for Steve before lifting the walkie talkie to his mouth while he keeps his hands locked in a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. 

She nods encouragingly at him, like 'say something, dingus,' so he clears his throat and chokes out, “Uhh. . . hiii, Jonathan!”

Steve can hear Mike face-palm from the very back, and Lucas heaves his God-I’m-so-done-with-Steve’s-shit sigh, and suddenly the whole situation seems so incredibly laughable, like, Steve not only condoned but encouraged six freshmen to lead him and Robin on a wild goose chase for buried treasure, like Jonathan (or Nancy, for that matter) would ever be remotely okay with that in any universe. 

There’s a beat of excruciating silence before Jonathan sighs heavily and replies, “What the fuck are you doing with the kids?” in this annoyed yet resigned voice, and it catches Steve so off-guard that he actually laughs, this quick burst of hilarity that he prays Jonathan doesn’t hear because Robin’s still holding down the fucking response button, but then Mike of all people, who’s got his hands clamped down over his mouth, laughs too, and then Dustin and Lucas are letting out desperately-muffled giggles, and Robin’s eyes are watering and she straight-up cackles in Steve’s face, and finally lets the button go just as El screams “Over!” through peals of laughter.

There’s a stretch of what should be silence but actually isn’t because the entire car is currently filled with the kids just losing their shit, and Steve’s shoulders are shaking with the force of his laughter, and Robin’s got her head thrown back again, and finally Jonathan’s voice filters through the walkie again, and it might just be Steve, but he swears he hears Nancy giggle somewhere in the background. 

“Steve Harrington,” Jonathan stresses, and yeah, he’s definitely trying to keep the laughter out of his voice, now, too, “my mom just called me in an absolute panic because she’d called Karen Wheeler to check on the kids only to find out that there was no “sleepover”, and Nance and I came to the conclusion that they must be with you, so,” he pauses, and Steve can hear him muffle a peal of relieved laughter into his hand or Nancy’s shoulder or some shit, and then he goes, “Harrington, what the fuck are you doing with six children and one Robin Buckley crammed in your car at four in the afternoon?”

Robin dissolves into giggles again and holds down the button for Steve, but all he can manage is, “How the hell did you know they’re in my car?”

And then Will starts laughing again, and Jonathan goes, “Will, oh my God, is he holding you hostage?!” , and Steve’s head spins because Jonathan Byers is making a fucking joke, and Robin holds down the button for Will, who goes “yeah, tell Mom it’s a code red,” through his giggles, and from the back, Mike screams “code orange, William!”, and the whole car shakes with laughter again as Steve pulls up to the edge of the forest. 

“But seriously,” Jonathan says, some sincerity returning to his quiet murmur. “I knew you were in a car because I could hear the windshield wipers. Anyway. Everyone’s good? Where are you guys headed?”

Robin looks panicked again even in the hilarity of the moment, and Steve rushes out, “Uh, we’re going on a spontaneous camping trip and the kids didn’t want Joyce or Hop to worry, y’know, like they have a tendency to do. Just tell ‘em we’ll probably be gone ‘til Monday and that everything’s fine.”

Jonathan heaves a relieved sigh, and says, “Good, I’ll let them know. Thanks for telling us, man,” and then, “Bye, guys!” and all the kids scream their farewells as Robin holds down the button one last time. 

Steve parks hastily at the edge of the woods, and just like that, the spell’s broken, and Robin tosses the walkie into her knapsack along with the map and file folders, and the kids hurtle out of the car as Steve throws his door open and realizes with a jolt that the rain has stopped, leaving only the vast, empty sky and runoff clinging to the leaves of the trees that tower over his car and the kids as they rush towards the forest. 

“Hey, small children!” Robin’s screaming in her Drill Sergeant voice, and the kids crowd around her again like she’s some sort of magnet.

“Listen up,” she declares, hands on her hips, all-business, and even Mike and Dustin quiet down at the jut of her chin and the commanding slant of her eyebrows. “We’re sticking to the buddy system, okay? That means everyone needs a pal that they don’t leave no matter what, got it? You guys have a track record of getting into sticky situations, so it’s crucial that you follow this one rule, if nothing else. This is gonna be fun as hell, but if we lose one of you guys, that’s on Steve.”

Steve is scandalized, and he must look the part, because Robin swats him playfully. “Sorry, that’s on Steve and me. So. Buddy system!” She yells, linking her arm with Steve’s. 

“Find a friend! Quick!” she shrieks, laughing as the kids scramble for their other half. Steve totally calls it, just for the record-- Will lunges for Mike, Max throws her arm around El’s shoulders protectively, and Dustin and Lucas gravitate slowly towards each other as the others pair up, like they didn’t immediately look at each other when Robin mentioned the buddy system. 

“Alright, dipshits!” Steve yells, grabbing the map from Robin’s knapsack and unfurling it under the shade of the oak trees. “Let’s get going! We wanna find that cave by sundown, got it?”

El salutes, and Steve can’t hold back his smile as Max laughs and follows suit, and suddenly all of them are saluting him and Robin, standing in this startlingly uniform line in front of the woods, and he prays to God he’s not leading them into any kind of trouble. 

They’re his kids, after all. And he promised Jonathan they were okay. 

\---

“Hang a left here,” Robin calls, motioning for the kids to follow her as she drags Steve through the underbrush. 

When you’re standing outside of a lush forest with a map and several shovels that your best friend yanked out of the trunk of your car at the last second, and her arm’s linked with yours and it’s not raining anymore, a walk through the woods sounds simple. All they’d have to do, Steve thought, was cross through the woods, then over a river, and then they’d find the cave in no time. They’d have to, ‘cause it was a fucking cave. Caves were big, and therefore pretty hard to miss. Probably. 

But when you’ve been trudging through said forest for going on two hours and you’ve got six disgruntled kids whining as they follow you through puddles and over precariously jagged rocks and tree roots and even a dead bird once, which was just kind of sad and almost made Mike cry even though he denies it, it doesn’t seem so simple anymore. 

In fact, it seems pretty goddamn impossible. 

It’s been an eternity of Dustin spouting out random science facts, Lucas looking like he’s on the verge of a murder spree due to Dustin’s constant stream of word vomit, and Mike and Will playing a bland game of “I Spy” that drags on and on but is somehow only limited to the various shit in Robin’s knapsack rather than the changing landscape around them. Max and El remain relatively quiet, but occasionally Steve can pick up on the plot of some TV show that Max is explaining to El, who watches her with all the guarded intensity of Robin watching the girls Steve flirts with at Family Video. 

Speaking of Rob, she’d entrusted Will with her bag after she’d offered to carry two of the three shovels she’d thought to bring, which was honestly something Steve hadn’t even considered. She’s doing the brunt of the work now, too, pulling him past thorny bushes and shoving tree branches out of his path.

“Rob, Robin, slow down,” Steve says, tugging gently on her arm to stop her. She halts in her tracks, and Mike and Will almost slam into them.

“What?” Robin spits, and yeah, okay, they’re all pretty beat, but she’s been shouldering most of the work by doing the navigation, and Steve kind of feels like shit for dragging her out here. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. “Do you think we should maybe take a break now? I mean, this is taking a little longer than anticipated, and it’s getting dark, and the kids have their sleeping bags, so. . .”

Robin sighs in relief, nodding vigorously. She drops the two shovels she’s got slung over one shoulder and Steve turns to face the kids, who look, for lack of a better word, like shit. 

“Alright, dumbasses,” he addresses them, and he sees Robin roll her eyes at him in his peripheral vision. “We’re gonna take a break in this clearing, ‘cause Rob’s beat, and I’m beat, and Will looks like he’s gonna collapse at the drop of a hat, so. Roll out your sleeping bags and go the hell to sleep.”

El salutes tiredly, and Steve lets an exhausted giggle escape him. The kids comply easily, dropping to the forest floor and unrolling the sleeping bags Robin had also packed in Steve’s trunk. She’d bought them weeks ago when the kids had first hatched the plan of spending a weekend at Steve and Robin’s apartment. It was back at the beginning of summer, and Steve could still remember Hop sitting him and Robin down at Joyce’s kitchen table and laying down the ground rules as El and Will listened in gleefully from the living room. Because they didn’t have enough beds for all of the kids, Rob had gone out and bought them all a sleeping bag of their own, and they’d laid them out in the living room for a movie marathon. They’d watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, then The Breakfast Club, and, at Max and Lucas’ insistence, The Shining. Steve’s constantly surprised by Robin’s level of preparedness, but this is a whole new high for her. 

“Hey, Will, toss me my bag,” she instructs, and he hands it to her, ever the cautious one. 

As the kids settle down, El and Max still whispering to each other, Robin pulls two blankets out of her bag that Steve recognizes as the throw that’s usually laid across their couch and the one she keeps in the basket at the end of her bed. Robin wordlessly hands him the throw, and he spreads it out over the damp grass as she rolls up the map and tucks it safely in her knapsack. 

“Alright, Harrington, move over,” she says, and he makes room for her on the blanket. She throws her blanket over them, and hey, it isn’t as cold out here as Steve thought. He sits up slightly to do a quick head-count, and sees that Will’s put his sleeping bag right next to Mike’s and has his head on the kid’s shoulder. Cute. Max and El are still whispering, and Steve’s not gonna tell them to pipe down, because it’s barely eight and he rarely sees El talk this much; Dustin and Lucas, on the other hand, are totally silent except for the occasional snore from Dustin and frustrated sigh from Lucas. Jonathan’s words echo in Steve’s mind as he settles back and Robin tucks her head into his shoulder. Everyone’s good. 

Unfortunately, the comfort of knowing all his kids are fine only lasts a couple of hours, because Steve wakes in the middle of the night to find the kids with their all flashlights flicked on, huddling around Will. As Steve blinks groggily, he notices that they’ve dragged all their sleeping bags around him like a kind of shield, and they’re all grouped in a tight circle around him like some sort of cult. 

“Hey,” Steve whispers, trying not to wake Robin before he realizes she’s knelt in front of Will in the center of the group, talking to him in that whispery voice she used to tell Sweetwine’s legend earlier in the day. Max looks over at Steve with gleaming eyes and beckons him over, and it’s only then that he realizes that Will is crying. 

The kid is choking on his words, and Steve’s heart lurches when he hears that Will’s just apologizing over and over, just this constant stream of “sorry, sorry, sorry”, and Mike’s got his hand on Will’s back as Robin shushes him, brushing his hair out of his face. Lucas and Dustin have got their knees drawn up to their chests, their faces pinched with worry, and El’s face is painted with what Steve can only describe as understanding. 

“I-I-I,” Will stutters, choking on a sob, “I’m sorry. Sorry, I just had a nightmare.”

“Kiddo, don’t apologize. It’s fine, okay?”

Robin sighs and pulls him into a gentle hug, loose enough that Will can pull away if he wants to, but the kid only wraps his arms around her as everyone falls into the embrace. Max tugs Steve into the hug, and he’s surprised to feel tears prick at his eyes. 

“Jesus, kid,” he says to Will. “You okay?”

Will nods, and Steve can swear he feels everyone heave the same sigh of relief. He can still see the kid shaking, though, so he buries his face in Robin’s shoulder and she throws an arm around him. Time stretches out before them, and all the sounds of the woods-- the crickets and frogs and goddamn owls-- melt away as Steve ruffles Will’s hair and blinks back tears. 

He can feel Robin crying, see the unmistakable tremble she gets in her shoulders when she can’t hold back her tears. He’s seen Robin cry more than he wishes he has-- on the hood of his car as they stargazed a week after Starcourt burned down, the morning after spending the night on the street outside Hawkins High after her parents kicked her out, the day he left for community college and took his stuff with him because living in the dorms at least made him feel like he’d escaped, in his arms when he’d taken her to the Byers’ and shown her her temporary bedroom for the first time, when Max had turned up outside their apartment with a black eye and a busted lip because her dad’s temper only worsened after Billy’s death. 

They all stay like that-- Steve and Robin and the kids-- until Mike tells Will some stupid joke and he huffs out a tired laugh, and El and Max start whispering again, and finally Dustin says, “mother of shit, I’m tired,” and everyone shakes with delirious laughter and untangles themselves from Will and each other, and before Steve knows it the kids have all fallen asleep again and it’s just him and Robin, staring up through the canopy of trees at the starry sky. 

“Hey,” she says after what feels like a year of crickets and frogs and owls, “look at me.”

Steve does, tilting his head down because Robin sleeps super low on her pillow ‘cause she’s freaking weird, and she says, “I’ve never seen him like that before.”

Steve’s seen his fair share of Traumatized Will, but Robin hasn’t ever had to really deal with it alone before, and he doesn’t even want to ask how long they’d all been awake before he finally woke up. 

He tucks a piece of Robin’s hair behind her ear. “Will’s a tough kid,” he says, all sincerity, and it reminds him of talking to Jonathan suddenly, because Robin’s eyes have gone all dark and serious, and Steve kind of feels like he’s gotten the breath knocked out of him because he doesn’t really know if he’s gone out of his depth with this conversation. 

“Yeah,” Robin agrees, nodding against his shoulder, “but he just. . . I woke up to him screaming, Steve. I don’t even know how you slept through it, dingus. I couldn’t calm him down at first, he just kept shaking and thrashing around and the only person he’d listen to was Mike. It was--” she cuts herself off, sucks in a breath. “Jesus, it scared me so much.”

Christ, Rob. 

Steve wraps an arm around her and pulls her into his chest, and then she snaps. 

The thing about Robin is that she’s spectacularly good at putting up a guard. She’s a master of camouflage, masking her lovesick stares for glares of jealousy at the girls Steve hits on, growing her hair and nails out when Ted Wheeler makes a comment on it after picking Mike up from Will’s, talking too loudly to Steve about the boys in her chemistry class when Nancy strolls into Family Video to return the kids’ rentals.

Sometimes Steve thinks she’s too good at hiding, at acting, at getting others to see what they want to see. Something about it reminds him faintly of the way Max looks at El, but the thought is gone too quickly for him to meditate properly on it. 

He could have laid here and pretended everything was fine. He could have laid here and Robin would have let him. 

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, dropping his hand and letting it smooth down her hair. “You did good, Robs. You did really good. You helped him, he’s alright now. Will’s fine. He’s fine.”

He feels her nod against him, and suddenly she pulls away and rolls onto her back, pointing up at the blanket of stars above them. 

“See that constellation there?” Steve follows her line of sight, but it just looks like another clump of stars to him. He nods anyway, because he can tell that Robin’s going somewhere with this, because she’s Robin, and she’s a billion times smarter than him. 

“It looks like Orion, right?” she prompts. Her voice is quiet, slipping over them like syrup. It always takes on this smooth quality when she’s tired, which was weird at first because Steve had expected it to go all raspy, like her laugh or her singing voice. Nope. Syrup. 

God, he’s tired. 

“Steve? Orion. Do you see it?”

Steve squints more at the constellation, but it doesn’t morph into the warrior he thinks Orion is supposed to be-- just sticks unmoving in the sky, like the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d helped Dustin tape to his ceiling. They’d marked the constellations that same day, using Mrs. Henderson’s fancy label-maker to stamp out where the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and that weird lion thing was, but Steve can’t remember anything Dustin rattled off about the one Robin’s pointing at. 

“Uhh, yeah,” he says, and Robin snorts beside him. 

“It’s okay that you don’t see it,” she says. “The bottom half of Orion is really what’s important.”

“And why’s that?” Steve asks, eyes fluttering shut.

“Well, the bottom half is this whole other constellation. The Lakota-- that’s a Native American tribe-- believed it was the hand of this Lakota chief. He was punished for his selfishness by having his arm ripped off, so his daughter said she’d marry whoever could return her father’s arm to him. This warrior, a son with a human mother and a star for a father--”

“His dad was a what?”

“A star. No questions, just listen,” she chides, pressing a hand over Steve’s mouth.

“Anyway, so this young warrior finds the chief guy’s arm and returns it to him, and he marries the daughter, and it’s supposed to symbolize how the younger generation was in harmony with the Gods or whatever.”

“Huh,” Steve says, not really knowing what he’s supposed to make of that.

Robin huffs her little laugh again. 

“I think,” she says slowly, “that it wasn’t really fair that the chief just got his hand back, y’know? Just because the kid found it? Like, did he deserve his hand if he was such a shitty leader? The kid should have gotten some kind of reward for it besides marriage. Maybe he didn’t even like the chief’s daughter.” 

She goes quiet for a couple of minutes, and Steve almost thinks she’s fallen asleep before she sighs this world-weary sigh that reminds him of Hopper and says, “Why are kids always saddled with the hard shit?”

Steve drags a hand over his face. He can practically hear Robin thinking. 

“I dunno, Robs,” he says sleepily. “Sounds like a load of bullshit to me.”

That startles a laugh out of her, so he presses on.

“Like, how did the guy even get his arm, like. . . attached again? Also, how the fuck did that kid even find it? When you think about it, he coulda just cut it off some other innocent dude and like, presented it to that girl like, ‘hey, found your Dad’s fuckin’ hand’, like what a load of shit--”

Robin’s eyes widen astronomically, and she rolls over and stuffs her face into the blanket to muffle her laughter. It’s like the cackle she let out in the car on the walkie talkie with Jonathan, and soon Steve’s laughing too, and they’re both practically thrashing around on the ground trying to just shut the hell up, and it’s only when Robin has her face buried in Steve’s shoulder and he’s trying to stop her from shaking out of her skin that a blinding light illuminates them.

Steve throws a hand over his eyes, and the light swings sideways onto Robin, who’s still cackling like a maniac. Steve squints, and realizes that Dustin’s awake and has his flashlight pointed at them with a slack-jawed look on his face.

“Holy shit,” he says loudly, and Mike rolls over and kicks him hard in the shin. Dustin ignores it, but Steve still has to hold back a laugh when he winces. 

“Is Robin crying?” Dustin asks, like it’s some impossible idea, and that sets Robin off again, and the kid’s face is just growing more and more concerned, so finally Steve shoves her off of him and says, “No. She’s laughing her head off like a freak,” and this sets Dustin off too once his flashlight lights up Robin’s gleeful expression. 

So now Steve really can’t sleep, but he can’t really bring himself to care because now Mike is fully awake, the little shit, and he’s hurling pebbles at Dustin and hissing “shut up” at him in this terrifying voice that finally betrays his relation to Nancy, because yeah, they’re both really scary when they’re sleep-deprived . 

Eventually, Mike gets sick of throwing pebbles and rolls over in his sleeping bag so that he’s facing Will, who’s also awake now and giggling quietly at the spectacle. Lucas and El have woken up too, and they’ve ganged up on Dustin for “disturbing their beauty sleep”, as El angrily puts it.

El gets pissed when people wake her up (Steve found this out the hard way the first time he slept over at the Byers’ and witnessed Mike get his own cereal poured over his head for “being too loud” in the morning), so she’s more than happy to do Lucas’ bidding, which just entails levitating weird, yet harmless bugs off of the ground and hurling them in Dustin’s direction. It would be more funny if the kid wasn’t flipping his shit about it, Steve thinks, but he wouldn’t like it if bugs got thrown at him, either, so. 

At some point, because Steve sure as hell doesn’t wear a watch and it isn’t like he’s been counting the hours since sundown like Dustin, Max wakes up during the worst of the commotion, when Dustin’s full-on screaming about the bugs (“that was a centipede, Lucas!”) and Robin’s probably delirious with lack of sleep yet somehow still laughing, and Max is, for lack of a better word, enraged. 

She unzips her sleeping back, flicks on her flashlight, and whirls on Lucas. 

“You,” she snarls, and Steve actually feels his pulse spike at the look in the kid’s eyes. 

“Stop messing with him and go to sleep. We have been out in the middle of the woods for hours, and at this point, I’m contemplating going all Donner Party on your asses because I haven’t eaten a thing since noon,” she spits, and Lucas looks like he’d rather be Dustin until she spins around and chucks Robin’s knapsack at Dustin’s head. 

“And you,” she says to him over Will’s muffled laughter, “Stop whining and shake out your sleeping bag. We’re in the forest, Dustin, bugs exist and even if El isn’t actively throwing them at you, they’re probably still gonna crawl all over you when you’re asleep,” she says, and Steve would be lying if he said that last bit didn’t cause him immense distress. 

Dustin seems worried by it too, but he shakes out his sleeping bag anyway and crawls back in, zipping it up all the way so that it covers his mouth. 

Max drops back onto her own sleeping bag, heaving an exasperated sigh. El crawls back over to her spot beside Max and places a soothing hand on her shoulder, and yeah, okay, Steve can see it now, too-- that fleeting thought he had earlier, that thing about the way El and Max look at each other. . . and now the casual touches, and the way Max’s anger wilts out of her as El brushes her hair behind her ear. . . He feels like he’s intruding on something. 

Robin snores softly beside him, and Steve remembers that he should probably be sleeping now, too, so he settles back against the mess of blankets they’re tangled in and curls his arms around Robin, like he’d do if they were back in the apartment and she was sad or sick or having another one of her grey days. 

He hears Dustin grumble one more time about the bugs, but another swift kick from Mike and everything’s silent. 

Even the owls have shut the fuck up. Thank God for Max and her reign of terror. 

\---

“Wake up, Dingus,” Robin sings, dropping her knapsack right on Steve’s chest, and Jesus, what the hell did she pack in this thing?

He jolts into a sitting position and shoves it off of him, levelling a glare at her that eventually turns into a smile because he physically can’t stay mad at Robin, or even slightly irritated with her, for more than a couple seconds. 

“We’re all ready to go,” she says brightly, tossing a granola bar at him. “Eat this and get moving, Harrington!”

He pulls himself up with Robin’s help, and sure enough, the kids have all their shit packed and look relatively excited about the day ahead considering the night they’d had. 

Mike and Will are at the front of the group, Will clutching the map to his chest in the wind. It’s overcast today, but nothing like the pouring rain they’d walked through yesterday, and Steve counts that as a win. Max and El are finishing off their own granola bars, and Steve realizes that Robin’s got food in the knapsack, because of course she would have remembered food. Dustin and Lucas are kicking pine needles and leaves at each other, and Steve shakes his head at them slightly before joining Robin beside Mike and Will. She’s got her arms crossed, the picture of seriousness, and Steve smiles at her. Thank God someone knows what they’re doing. 

“Okay, small children,” Robin says, and the kids snap to attention. 

“I think I hear a river nearby, and the map’s got us heading left for a bit, so I’m assuming it’s around this bend,” she says, gesturing to a line of trees that curve off onto a trail to the left of them. Steve can almost make out the sound of rushing water too, and it sends a tiny thrill through him. 

“All we have to do then is cross the river and follow it on the other side to the cave, where the treasure is hopefully buried. Then,” she says, hefting one of the shovels off her shoulder, “we dig.”

The kids cheer as she spins around, leading the group down the trail as Mike yells out “directions” that aren’t really important but add to the adventure, and Steve doesn’t really care if they find anything or not, because right now, this is more than enough. 

El and Max shriek with laughter when Dustin finally snaps and hurls a tree branch at Lucas, who screams like a little girl, and Mike yells that he sounds like Holly. 

“That’s Mike’s little sister,” Will informs Steve and Robin solemnly. “She’s, like, four.”

In retaliation, Lucas whines something about Dustin committing a hate crime, and Robin loses it as they trudge further down the trail, Steve catching her as she trips over her own feet. Mike and Will laugh at her antics and jostle each other when Mike nearly trips over a tree root. 

They’ve been rushing down the trail, which is sloped in a surprisingly smooth decline, and suddenly the sound Steve heard earlier is growing, like rain but louder, more uniform, and it’s only when Mike stops dead in his tracks and Robin nearly slams into him that they all see it. 

“It’s the river!” El shrieks, and Max screams with excitement as they all break into a run at once, racing towards it like, as El would say, “bats out of hell”. El and her idioms, Steve thinks, grinning into the wind as Robin yanks him forward. 

“We’re rich, bitches!” Dustin screams, and Lucas cackles this high-pitched laugh that sends them all into hysterics. 

Robin and Steve reach the river’s edge first, and they stop so abruptly that Steve nearly goes crashing in. 

The rest of the kids get the memo and slow down sooner, but Lucas still practically skids to a halt at the very edge. Dustin lunges forward and pulls him away from the water. 

“Okay,” Robin says breathlessly, eyes sparkling, “the cave’s on the other side, so. . . El? You think you can lift us across one by one?”

The crowd of kids parts like the red freakin’ sea, like they do every time El is called forward to use her powers, and Steve holds back a smile when she steps purposefully to the front of the group. 

El had to work her way up to gaining her powers back-- it was a gradual process-- but Steve wagers that she’s probably stronger than she’s ever been before. Just last week, she’d levitated Hopper out of her bedroom when he’d gone to remind her to do her summer reading assignment-- he’d relayed the whole event at breakfast with the Byers, Steve, and Robin the next morning, because visiting the Byers family for breakfast is something they do now, and Joyce had laughed so hard that milk shot out of her nose. She’d had to excuse herself, still laughing, as Will and El tried (and failed. . . like, miserably) to keep it together. 

Now, El nods determinedly, ignoring the worried glance Mike shoots her. 

Even after the break-up, which was mutual and surprisingly mature for a couple of thirteen-year-olds, he’s still scarily protective of her. Steve gets it-- it’s how he feels about Nancy now. Mike and El have been through hell and back, and the fact that they’re strictly friends now doesn’t change that. Steve still remembers the afternoon it happened-- the break-up, that is-- because Hopper had burst into the Byers’ living room, singing, and Joyce had laughed and asked him why he was so elated. 

“Mike and El are just friends now,” he’d exclaimed, falling back onto the sofa in relief. “I think it’s final, Joyce!” 

Even though it wasn’t really his place to comment, Steve had thought it was for the best, too-- after all, they’re kids, and if he’s being honest he doesn’t really like the idea of any of them dating. Romance is just messy, and none of the kids need that kind of stress in their lives. 

Now, El steps forward, motioning for everyone else to move away from Robin. Steve stumbles back as he watches his best friend’s feet leave the forest floor, and holy shit, okay, maybe this is a bigger deal than he initially thought. 

Robin’s laughing though, clutching the shovels to her chest and yelping as El flicks her wrist in a “shoo” motion and Robin goes sailing over the river, landing gently on the other side. She’s fine, all smiles, but Steve feels like he suddenly understands the phrase “heart attack” way better than he did in seventh grade health class. 

El repeats the process with the rest of the kids until she gets to Steve, and he feels his heart drop like he’s on a rollercoaster when she lifts him up into the air. He’s hyper-aware of the rushing of the river as she flicks her wrist again, like, 'no big deal, just fly over that death trap,' and he does, and then his feet are on solid ground again and Robin’s crushing him in a hug and El’s still standing on the other side, and then he wonders idly if she can lift herself. 

Mike must be having the same thought, because he asks, “Can you fly across?” 

El’s eyebrows knit together, and she bites her lip. 

“I. . . I don’t know,” she admits, then blanches like she’s surprised herself. 

“I’ve never tried before.”

Max steps forward so she’s at the front of the group. “She knows she can move other things, but it might be a different power altogether for her to move herself,” and Steve knows he should be more alarmed, but the way she says it sounds strangely poetic, and all he can focus on is the determination in Max’s eyes. She believes El can get across. 

El nods from across the river, and Robin, ever the problem-solver, says “Okay, then. . . give it a test run. Get far away from the river and try to levitate on solid ground. It can't hurt, right?”

El smiles at her, and Steve feels a twinge in his chest. They can’t just leave her. 

She bounds away from the river’s edge onto the trail, where it slopes softly onto flat ground, and closes her eyes against the wind.

Max lunges forward suddenly and lets out a cheer of encouragement, startling Will. “You can do it, El!”

The rest of the kids follow suit, clapping and yelling like lunatics. 

“You got this, El!” yells Dustin. “Come on, you can do it!”

“You’re a total badass!” Lucas screams. “What’s a little self-levitation?!”

Steve can almost see the cogs in her brain turning when she clenches both fists and suddenly she’s up about a foot in the air and the kids are all screaming and clapping, Dustin whooping in his ear maniacally as Robin cheers her on. 

“El, holy shit!” Mike yells above the chaos. “You can fly!”

She beams at him, and only seems to float higher at the other kids’ excitement. 

“Come on, El!” Robin yells, cupping her hands around her mouth against the wind. “Get across the river! You can do it!”

The wind whips impossibly fast around them, stirring up leaves and pine needles and centipedes, probably, as El propels herself forward, kicking at the air like it’s water she’s moving through. The kids are going ballistic, and Steve wishes he could’ve seen her flip that car they’re always talking about, because seeing her in action is. . . it’s like feeling the drop in an elevator or feeling your feet fly out from under you. It’s like getting punched in the face by Jonathan Byers, Steve thinks, and the thought sends him into a fit of laughter just as El lands in the middle of the group, swiping a hand under her nose as Max pulls her into a hug. 

The others crush around them, still whooping and cheering like they’re at the Superbowl, and for a fleeting moment Steve forgets altogether why they’re in the woods and just wraps the kids in a hug. 

When the general thrill of El’s newfound abilities wears off and the kids disentangle themselves, Robin points gallantly in the direction of the current. 

“This way, small children,” she declares, and they take off like bats out of hell down the embankment towards caves and treasure and the rest of their Sunday.

\---

Steve realizes less than fifteen minutes later that he’s extremely out of shape.

Sure, running from interdimensional monsters every year can help you get fit, but ever since Steve got out of high school, he hasn’t been much of an athlete. He’s trying to focus on his studies in college-- majoring in psychology was a decision he’d made for the kids just as much as himself and Robin, and he can still remember the way Joyce’s face had lit up when he told her he wanted to be a child psychologist-- so sports haven’t really been on his agenda for the past year. 

Exhibit A: Steve falls behind the rest of the group quickly, and Robin has to actively slow down to fall into step with him. Up ahead, he can see that the kids have abandoned the buddy system in favor of clumping together in a jumbled group, like they always seem to do when they’re excited. El and Max are leading the rest of the little dipshits down the riverbank, and the trail seems to stretch impossibly long before them. Steve hopes the cave isn’t too far off-- he really hates the idea of arriving back at the Byers’ any later than 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. 

“Hey, Steve!” Dustin calls out, slowing to match Steve and Robin’s half-jog.

The kid’s panting, but his eyes are shiny with excitement, and he’s smiling his weird toothy grin at both of them. 

“How much longer do you think ‘til we reach the cave? Mike and Lucas are fighting over how we’re gonna split up the treasure and I just wanna know when the hell Max and El are gonna slow down,” he wheezes out, and Steve and Robin stumble to a walking pace as the kids finally begin to slow down ahead of them. Steve thinks he sees Max floating just slightly above the ground, laughing as the wind whips leaves around her and El swipes a hand under her nose again. 

“I dunno, Dustin,” Steve admits. “Rob’s the navigator, ask her,” and Dustin turns and is about to, but suddenly the kids have all halted in their tracks in front of a clump of trees that’s branching off from the trail of the river, and Robin throws her arm out in front of Steve to stop him in his tracks. 

She’s pointing up, he realizes, just above the mess of trees. 

Behind the halo of leaves and brush, he can make out a jut of rock, impossibly taller than he’d imagined it. The cave is secluded behind the circle of trees, but it towers above the branches, and Will races towards the wooded area before all the kids follow suit, Dustin hurrying ahead of Steve and Robin. 

Robin tugs Steve forward, and they break through the trees, leaves snagging in their hair, and suddenly they’re in a clearing staring into the mouth of the cave, which just looks like slabs of granite folding in on each other, curling into an endless abyss. 

Max clicks on her flashlight. 

“Holy fuck,” Mike says, panting, and Steve shoves his way forward to whack the kid with Robin’s bag. 

“Language, Wheeler!” 

“Steve,” Robin says, eyes glinting, “you are such a mom. Now get the hell out of the way.” She shoulders her way past the rest of the group and pivots to face them, standing with her hands on her hips at the mouth of the cavern. 

“Okay, weirdos,” she says in her Drill Sergeant voice, “I let it slide while we were running that little marathon, but it’s time to reinstitute the buddy system. Everyone link arms with your buddy and don’t let go; we don’t know how far this bitch of a cave even goes, so it’s integral that we all stay together. Friend in one arm, flashlight in the other, all right? And for the love of God, don’t touch anything that looks vaguely interdimensional!”

The kids all nod, scrambling to link arms as Steve hurries over to Robin to get his flashlight from her bag. 

She grins at him, and he links their arms just as Robin throws her other hand out to stop Mike from running into the cave first. 

“Also,” Robin adds, smiling as Mike scowls at her, “Steve and I go first, and all of you guys follow us. Got it?”

El salutes again, and the rest of the kids nod as Robin turns and drags Steve along into the cave, swinging her flashlight across the walls of rock like they’re looking for caveman art or some shit. 

The first thing Steve notices is that the ground under them remains a mess of dirt, which is pretty reassuring because he’d wondered earlier how their gardening-level shovels would have been able to dig through solid rock. The cavern seems to stretch on for miles, and suddenly Steve is second-guessing their little weekend adventure. How the hell were they gonna know where the treasure was buried, even if it was in the cave?

Robin doesn’t seem daunted, though, and drags Steve forward as the kids talk amongst themselves in the back, their thrilled voices echoing off the walls of the cave. Steve glances over his shoulder, just to make sure they’re all okay (Will hates the dark, but the combined power of all their flashlights is probably helping). 

“Did you guys--” Dustin starts, dragging Lucas with him as he shoves his way in front of a scandalized Max and El, “Did you guys know that certain caves are technically ‘alive’ and growing, and if you touch the walls of the caverns, the oils on your hands can permanently stop the cave’s growth?” 

Lucas rolls his eyes, like, 'I heard enough of this science shit on the way here,' but El looks mildly interested, and she drags a hand along the side of a jut of rock. 

“El!” Max exclaims, laughing, and El’s face lights up. 

“Bitch of a cave,” she says, all smug, and Steve realizes that she's parroting what Robin said earlier in her little stay-together speech. 

He snorts out a laugh at that, but stops when he feels Robin tug lightly on his arm. She’s come to a halt near a fork in the cave, her flashlight beam bouncing between the two paths nervously. 

“Uh,” Robin says, eyes flitting to Steve’s in a questioning glance. He merely shrugs, like, 'what are you gonna do?'

The kids all stumble to a stop too, their flashlights swinging around the cavern. A beat of silence passes before Lucas sighs his what-the-hell sigh and goes, 

“So what the hell are we gonna do now?”

Robin’s struggling for an answer when Will’s flashlight comes to rest on what looks like a hole inside one of the cavern walls-- the rock juts inward on itself, but doesn’t go all the way through to the outside of the cave. It’s about a head higher than Steve, and the kids all turn their gazes upward to peer at it. 

“That’s not convenient at all,” Mike says, grinning, and it takes Steve a second to realize what he means. 

The kids think the treasure is up there. 

El is already shoving her way to the front of the group, and the fork in the cave is forgotten as Robin marches over, dragging Steve with her. 

“Look, little lady,” she says to El, her voice taking on that whispery quality again. “You’ve done a hell of a lot today and we don’t want you over-exerting yourself. That ledge is definitely close enough to us for Steve to hoist himself up and see if anything’s hidden there with his flashlight.”

El sighs, resigned, and Robin ruffles the kid’s hair before pushing her back into the rest of the group and dragging Steve forward. 

“Alright, Harrington,” she says. “You got this. Just like basketball, right? Jump and hang on to the ledge, shine your flashlight around, see if anything shiny’s crammed in there.”

Steve rolls his eyes as Dustin claps him on the back encouragingly. 

He sticks his flashlight in the pocket of his jeans before taking a running start at the ledge and leaping up towards it. He hoists himself up on his elbows and grabs the flashlight out of his pocket as Robin and the kids cheer. 

The hole itself juts deep into the wall of the cavern, and as he shines his light around, all he can see for a few moments is grime and something that looks alarmingly like mold on the walls. 

“See anything?” Dustin calls, and Steve pulls himself up higher on his elbows, and it’s only then that his light bounces off something that looks vaguely like a box shoved deep inside the cavern. 

He nearly drops the flashlight, and the kids must see him jolt in surprise, because suddenly they’re all yelling over each other excitedly, and Robin goes, “You okay, Steve?”

“Uhh, yeah,” he says, trying not to betray anything before he’s grabbed hold of the box. The kids seem to catch the excitement clinging to his voice, though, because they all cheer from below. 

“I just need to grab it. It might be heavy, I dunno, just--" he hoists himself further into the cavern-- “just have El ready to catch me with her powers or some shit if I fall, okay?” 

Despite what she said earlier, Robin says, “Got it!”, and Steve can hear the shuffle of El moving past the rest of the group to stand closer to the ledge above them.

Steve throws the arm that isn’t holding his light out at the box, and he feels the grimy weight of it as he drags it forward the best he can with his limited mobility. The box is heavier than he’d anticipated, about three feet long, and he feels his flashlight-holding arm start to give out as he pulls the box towards him. He’s hoisted up on one elbow, and it’s digging into the gravelly rock of the ledge, and if Steve is being honest, he doesn’t know how the hell he’s gonna get the box down to the kids without breaking something. 

“Steve?” Robin yells, and he can almost picture the worry on her face. “If it’s too heavy to drag down with you, just let yourself fall and El will catch you! We can have her lift it out off the ledge!”

Steve sighs in relief. “Thank God!”

He lets go of the box and the ledge at the same time, and feels his body jolt to a halt in mid-air before he’s lowered down onto solid ground again. El is grinning at him along with the rest of the kids, and she doesn’t even bother with wiping her nose before moving past Steve and throwing her hands up in the air, pulling them towards her as the box drags along the edge of the ledge and then floats into the open air above them.

“Holy shit!” Robin crows, elated, and the kids simultaneously freak as El lowers the box in the middle of the circle they’ve made in the cavern, clinging onto each other in excitement. 

“We’re rich, we’re rich, we’re freaking rich,” Dustin is babbling, and Lucas lunges forward and tries to pry the box open as Robin laughs, her voice bouncing off the walls of the cave. 

There’s a grimy padlock that’s clamping the lid of the box tightly shut, and El smiles to herself like, 'sure, nice try,' before tilting her head at it. The mechanism snaps easily, and the lid of the box flies open almost as quickly as the kids rush towards it. 

They crowd around the thing, and Steve gets a faceful of Dustin’s curls as he tries to see inside. 

The cavern is deadly silent for a beat, and Steve finally can’t take it anymore and shoves Dustin away from the edge, peering inside at--

“Oh my God,” Robin says breathlessly, and it’s like a switch flips. 

The kids are losing their shit, and Steve can barely hear them over the rush of blood that’s suddenly thrumming through his ears, because holy shit is right: the box is crammed wall-to-wall with stacks of bills. 

“WE’RE RICH!” Dustin is yelling again, louder than the kids had been playing that Cyndi Lauper music when Steve and Robin first rolled into the Byers’ driveway, and Mike and Lucas are jumping around him like he’s a goddamn poet, chanting it with him. El got so excited that when she hugged Max they flew an inch or two in the air, and now they’re doing a little happy dance with Will as Robin practically hugs the chest of cash. 

“Should I care that this money was plundered and therefore this entire expedition is bordering on immoral?” Robin’s asking herself, doing that thing where she rambles when she’s excited, “No! Not in the slightest! I probably should, but I don’t!”

Steve crows out a shocked laugh as Robin slings her knapsack off her shoulder and drops the shovels with a clatter to the ground, pulling herself into a standing position, smiling at the kids like, 'bitch, we did this.'

“Alright, SMALL CHILDREN!” She yells triumphantly, and the celebration stumbles to a halt, though the smiles never leave the kids’ faces. 

“We’ll divide up our earnings later, but for now I need all of you to stuff as much of this shit into your sleeping bags as possible, because we are NOT lugging this bitch of a box back to Steve’s car!” 

The kids get to work instantly, slinging sleeping bags off of their shoulders and unfurling them, shoving wads of real American money, holy shit, into every crevice as Robin pulls her knapsack shut and hoists it back over her shoulder. 

Luckily, they haven’t gone too far into the cave that they can’t see their way back out, and an elated Mike leads the way out of the cavern and through the trees again, all of them whooping like lunatics into the afternoon sky. 

He and Rob fall to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the trail Robin’s marked with little pieces of duct tape from her knapsack along the way. Steve wonders idly if they’d have survived without her on this little adventure.

The trek back down the river bank is charged with excitement, and Steve can almost feel the electricity buzzing through the air. Sure, he’d expected to find something, like fuckin’ bats or some interdimensional sludge if they got really unlucky, but Sweetwine’s fortune had not been on that list. He can barely wrap his own head around it, but he guesses he’s seen stranger things. . . 

“Since the map was in Will’s basement, he should get the bigger portion of the loot if we have to divide it unevenly,” Mike is saying, and Steve has to bite back a smile, because sure, the kid can be an asshole, but when it comes to Will he’s a regular Mother Teresa. Also, he used the word “loot” dead seriously, like they’re in some pirate movie, which is funny as shit

“No, no, no,” Dustin interjects, “if there’s an odd number of bills, Max should get more since she’s the one who actually found the map.”

Max shakes her head, fiery waves swaying serenely around her shoulders. “Nah, Will can have it. He’s been through shit.”

The sincerity in her voice sends a pang through Steve’s chest-- he forgets how selfless Max can be sometimes, even if she is quick to anger. Shortly after Hopper went missing, she dug flannel after flannel out of her own closet and gave them to El because she knew they reminded her of Hop. When a tense-looking Will suggests a comedy rather than a horror movie, she’s always the first to jump on the bandwagon with him even though she loves slasher movies. The kid is really emotionally mature, and that’s a good thing, of course, but sometimes Steve worries that it’s because her home life forced her to grow up too fast. 

“I don’t really care about it, guys,” Will assures them. “As long as I get some of it, I’m good. I mean, El did most of the work by lifting the box down and unlocking it.” 

“I like money,” El says pensively, and this gets a laugh out of the rest of the kids. Robin throws an arm around Steve as they reach the area of the river that they’d crossed the first time. 

El lifts herself across after sending Max to the other side first, because she didn’t want to be the last one over the river again. Steve couldn’t blame her-- the thought of all that rushing water separating him from the others was anxiety-inducing, even if he’d never admit it. 

This time, Lucas floats across last, and Dustin links their arms hurriedly as Robin directs the group around the bend again, trudging forward slower than usual as the weight of the cash in her knapsack pulls her down. Steve rushes forward, lifting it off of her shoulders to her chagrin. 

“Hey, Dingus, I can carry it--”

“Nope,” he cuts her off, snorting out a laugh as she scowls at him. “You’ve been doing all the heavy lifting this weekend, Buckley. Let me lighten the load for like, an hour, okay?”

Robin rolls her eyes, but nods resignedly anyway. 

“Hey, guys,” Will pipes up from the back of the group, trailing along with Mike practically on top of him. “How are we gonna explain all this cash to the parents?”

Well, shit. 

\---

Okay, so maybe Steve and Robin are good with the kids. Maybe they can cook a mean omelette and play a badass DnD campaign and host a killer movie night, but their adulting skills pretty much end there. They’re exceptional at the entertainment aspects of parenting, but the logical thinking that actually taking care of the little shits requires tends to elude Steve and Robin most of the time-- exhibit A: they definitely haven’t planned ahead. 

They dove headfirst into this weekend-long adventure without ever considering how they’d react to the possible outcomes-- if they found nothing and the kids were crushed, how would Steve and Robin have comforted them? If they did find something, what the hell were they gonna do with it? Stash it in Hopper’s shack in the woods? Hide it in Steve and Robin’s apartment? Surreptitiously deposit it into the kids’ bank accounts throughout their high school years?

It’s on the long trudge back to Steve’s car that he ponders these questions, as the kids bicker about their latest DnD campaign and how long Mike is planning to drag it out and Robin tries to teach El how to do a cartwheel along the trail. They stop for five-minute breaks along the trail to guzzle water from the thermoses Robin’s given each of them and rest their legs. What was a downward slope on the way to the cave is an uphill battle on the way back-- thank God at least the kids are in shape. 

The sun is slinking lower in the sky, painting the sky a soothing peach-- the dying light slants through the trees like honey, painting Robin and the kids in hues of orange and pink. Steve tries to hold onto the image as he pulls himself to the top of the incline they’re headed up-- pretty soon, he’ll probably be dead at the hands of one Jim Hopper.

The camping trip story he’d blabbed to Jonathan in a panic might have been good, but how the hell were they going to explain the kids’ heavy-as-shit sleeping bags? Maybe they’d just leave them in the trunk and Steve and Robin could take everything back to their apartment. That won't be suspicious, either, since the kids just leave their sleeping bags at the apartment after impromptu sleepovers, anyway. Yeah. That’ll work.

Besides, it’s not like they committed some sort of crime. They simply. . . took advantage of a rainy weekend, following a map that Steve was pretty positive was gonna get them nowhere. He was just looking out for the kids so they didn’t try to do it all by themselves. 

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Steve says, shouldering his way to the front of the group. El’s got Max floating in the air again, just above the ground, and she’s shrieking with laughter as Lucas and Dustin try to pull her back down and Mike and Will sing some song about having cold hard cash. 

The kids look up at him, El lowering Max gently to the forest floor, and Steve can’t hold back his smile. “Alright. Here’s the plan: we put your sleeping bags in the trunk and take them back to the apartment after we drop you little freaks off. For now, the money stays with us. Just so we never get a call from Joyce Byers about the wads of cash Will’s stuffed under his mattress--” at this, Will snorts out a laugh, “--or a knock on our door from an angry Hopper who wants to know why El’s wardrobe has suddenly doubled in size.”

Robin nods authoritatively, sidling up beside Steve and slinging an arm around his shoulder. 

“Think of it as. . . a bank. Steve and Robin’s emergency money. For you guys, of course-- ideally we can keep as much of it saved up as possible for your guys’ college tuitions--”

“Aw, but that’s boring!” Mike interjects, and Rob just rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, but it’s also smart as hell. Don’t worry-- if you guys need a little spending money we’ll be more than happy to fork some over in small increments, we just have to be careful, okay?”

The kids all nod in unison, which is kinda fuckin’ creepy, but they all seem to be in agreement, so Steve counts it as a win. 

Robin seems satisfied, too, and Steve pulls her closer as they turn and lead the kids towards the edge of the forest. 

The kids all cheer when they catch sight of the thin canopy of trees that separates Steve’s car from the edge of the woods, and they speed up as a group, eager to finally get the weight off of their shoulders. As they break through leaves and branches into the cool evening air, Robin snatches her knapsack from Steve and screams, “Race you to the car!”

The kids hear her, and it’s a free-for-all: El, still high on her river adventure from earlier, propels herself into the air like it’s nothing as Mike, Dustin, and Lucas stumble over each other in a desperate beeline for the car. Max speeds ahead of them, just a hair’s width behind El as Will finally gives in and barrels towards the car, beating all of them by a landslide. 

“See?” Steve says to Robin as he opens the trunk and the kids pile their sleeping bags in. “Told you Will can book it if he wants to.”

The kids beams at Steve as he shoves his sleeping bag into the back of the car, and Steve high-fives him on his way to the driver’s side. 

The little shitheads (read: Mike and Dustin) are bickering over who’s going to sit in the third row again, and Mike yells something about “the inherent injustice of sitting in the middle seat” as Will slides wordlessly into the very back. Lucas, resigned to his fate, follows suit, and soon there’s only one space left in the third row, and Dustin takes his chance and shoves Mike into the back before climbing into the second row of seats next to Max and El, who’ve already claimed their seats thanks to Max’s take-no-shit attitude. 

Robin laughs as Mike bitches in the back, climbing into the passenger’s seat and promptly propping her feet up on the dash and rooting around in her bag for another tape. 

Steve sends her a tired smile, does a quick head-count in the rearview mirror (he will never recover from the time he’d left Dustin at that gas station), and peels onto the road back to town as Robin shoves a tape labelled “Goonies never say die” into Steve’s tape player. 

“The Goonies again?” he asks her as Dustin and Mike continue arguing and El dozes off on Max’s shoulder. “What is with you and that movie, Buckley?”

She shakes her head, and a strand of hair escapes her ponytail. “It’s a goddamn travesty that you’ve never seen it, I mean-- two summers working at Family Video and not even once have you seen the greatest summer movie of all time! It’s unbelievable, Steve!’ She exclaims, throwing up her hands as a Cyndi Lauper song he recognizes-- “Good Enough”-- blares from the tape player. 

Max must have heard Robin, because she yells, “Steve’s never seen The Goonies?!” 

El blinks awake blearily at the sudden noise, and Max apologizes in that quiet voice she seems to reserve only for El before chucking her thermos at Steve. 

“Hey!” he yells, dodging it. “I’m sorry, guys, I had no idea I was so uncultured!”  
Robin huffs out a laugh. “Well, you are. I’m gonna make you watch that as soon as we get home.”

“Movie night?” El asks groggily, and it’s like a switch flips-- Dustin and Mike quit arguing long enough to yell their agreement, while Will lifts his head from where he’s rested it against the window, eyes lighting up. Lucas just snores from the back, but Steve likes to think he’d be excited if he were awake. 

“Yes,” Max stresses, leaning forward in her seat. “Movie night to culture Steve!”

Robin’s face lights up, and she turns a pleading expression on Steve. He throws his hands up for a second, like, I have no choice, and says, “Fine. As long as Joyce and Hopper are okay with it. The rest of you little dipshits should probably call your parents when we get to Will’s, just to let them know you haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.”

“My dad won’t care,” Max says hurriedly, and Steve sees Robin tense beside him. 

“Okay, kiddo,” he says easily. “That’s fine, you just stay with us for the night.”

She seems satisfied by this answer, and finally settles back into her seat, letting her head loll to rest on top of El’s.

The car drifts into silence except for the muted melodies of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way” coloring the drive back to the Byers’ house. 

\---

As the kids huddle together in Joyce Byers’ living room, dozing off as the end credits of The Goonies roll down the screen, Steve and Robin extricate themselves from the tangle of limbs that Max, El, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike have morphed into, dusting popcorn kernels off of their clothes as Jonathan ambles into the room with a mug of tea for Robin. 

“Hey,” he murmurs quietly, trying not to wake the kids, “heard you played babysitter all weekend.”

Robin huffs out a laugh, nodding into the quiet as Steve tried to rearrange his face into something that didn’t look quite as offended as he felt. 

“Something like that. Steve was the chauffeur, as usual, so I had to carry the crushing burden of keeping Max and Lucas from murdering everyone.”

Jonathan smiles knowingly. “Everyone being Mike,” he clarifies, and Steve laughs. 

“Yeah. Also,” Steve says mock-accusingly, levelling a faux glare at Jonathan, “where the hell is my tea, Byers?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes, and Robin giggles into her mug when he claps Steve on the back and deadpans, “Make your own, Harrington. I’m not your maid.”

Steve’s still reeling from whatever that was when Jonathan shoulders past him and grabs a throw blanket from the floor, spreading it over the sleeping kids, who’ve all piled together on the couch and vaguely resemble a pack of sardines. Jonathan steps back, his eyes sweeping over the kids for another second before he brushes Max’s hair out of her face and turns back towards Robin and Steve. 

“So,” he says, like this has been on his tongue since he walked into the room. “What did you guys really do this weekend?”

Robin chokes on her tea, and Steve takes the mug from her, patting her on the back. The sight is enough to quirk the corners of Jonathan’s mouth up, and soon Steve is muffling his own second-hand laughter into his palm. 

“Uhh,” Steve says, pausing for more than a couple of seconds. “We, uh. We went camping.”

Robin sighs heavily, covering her face with her hands as Jonathan’s eyes flicker between the two of them like they’re some kind of puzzle he can’t figure out. 

“C’mon, guys,” he says. “Camping? Camping’s not half as funny as you all made it sound over that call on Saturday. I mean, Robin lost it, dude. What were you really doing?”

Robin and Steve share that look that only they can-- that what-do-we-do glance that Hopper calls “the criminal gaze”-- and after what feels like about a year of just standing under Jonathan Byers’ quietly assessing gaze, Robin sighs heavily, grabs Jonathan by the sleeve, and leads him out to Steve’s car with Steve trailing behind them cluelessly. 

“Okay,” Robin says once the front door’s squeaked shut behind them. 

“We were taking them camping. Seriously, we were, but. . . well, we didn’t want you or Nancy or your mom to know.”

“Why?” Jonathan asks, eyebrows knitting together. Steve feels just as confused-- where is she going with this?

“Well,” Robin says, and her voice takes on that mystic quality again, “we wanted to be in a secluded spot when we planned out all the details of. . .”

“The details of what?” Jonathan prompts, and Robin sends a panicked glance towards Steve (where is her Oscar?!) before turning towards Jonathan and letting out a sigh of frustration. 

“The details of your mom and Hopper’s engagement party!” Robin blurts out, and Jonathan’s mouth falls open for a half-second, his eyes wide. 

“They-- Mom and Hop are getting married?!”

Robin nods vigorously, and okay, maybe she’s not acting, because her eyes are shiny with tears, and suddenly Steve’s mouth is falling open too because holy shit are they really engaged?

“Yes! Yes!” she says, still nodding. “Yes, they are, and Hop called me a week ago to tell me, and he said he wanted it to be a surprise for everyone else but that he just had to tell someone, and so I decided to tell Steve and the kids so we could throw them a big party, y’know, because Hop said they didn’t want anything big but I wanted to do something, so. . . so. . . yeah. I just didn’t want to spoil it for you and Nance. We wanted to surprise all of you guys.”

Steve’s gaping at Robin as Jonathan crushes her in a hug, and she nods at him over Jonathan’s shoulder. 

Holy shit.

\---

An hour later, Robin and Steve are laid out on the living room floor of their apartment, and Steve’s still asking questions. 

“What the hell, Rob?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shakes with laughter, brushing a stray curl behind his ear. “Because,” she says. “You would’ve said something to Nancy within, like, five minutes flat. You can’t keep a secret to save your life, Harrington.”

He huffs indignantly, batting her hand away. “Not true. So not true. I would’ve taken that with me to the grave.”

Robin laughs again, loud, and it’s like sunlight spills into the room. “Yeah, well. . . I told the kids when you were asleep Saturday night.”

“What?!” Steve exclaims, sitting up to whack her with the nearest magazine. “Robin!”

“I couldn’t help it!” she shrieks through laughter, frantically shoving him away from her as she sits up, too. 

“You told Mike Wheeler that Joyce and Hopper got engaged before you told me?”

She bites her lip to keep from laughing, and Steve sighs his best imitation of Lucas’ done-with-your-shit sigh. 

“The betrayal,” he laments, leaning back against the foot of their couch and letting his head fall back on the cushions. 

“Sorry, dingus,” Robin says, and she sounds so genuinely guilty for a moment that Steve pats her knee consolingly. 

“I forgive you,” he murmurs. 

“Anyway,” Robin drawls, scooting back until she’s sitting beside him with her back against the sofa, “the treasure. . .”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, remembering the sleeping bags they’d lugged from his trunk and stored carefully in the hall closet. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” Robin agrees, her voice soft and reflective. “Maybe that’s our Lakota’s hand.”

What?

“What?” Steve asks, the exhaustion of their weekend adventure finally catching up to him. 

“Y’know, like the constellation I told you about,” Robin explains quietly, letting her head nestle into Steve’s shoulder. They fit together like-- well, like puzzle pieces, Steve thinks. He remembers Jonathan’s questioning gaze in the Byers’ kitchen and shivers. 

“It’s like. . . the Universe is finally paying us back for all the crazy shit we had to endure,” Robin whispers. “Like the Lakota chief getting his hand back. Only we actually deserve our reward.”

Steve nods against her as his eyes slip closed, his mind wandering to Max and El floating down the trail in the woods, and Mike and Dustin and Lucas yelling over each other about their stupid game over the patter of rain on the roof of the car, and Will beating all of them in their little race, his eyes shining, and Hopper down on one knee in front of Joyce over dinner like Robin had told him it’d happened, and Nancy and Jonathan screaming their hearts out to The Cure in concert, and Robin’s stupid laugh rising above the blare of her Cyndi Lauper tapes, and suddenly he can feel himself tearing up. He grabs Robin’s hand, running his finger over one of the scars she’d gotten a summer ago.

“Yeah,” he agrees gently. “But I think there are more important things that it already gave us.”


End file.
